March 2nd, 1890 — Conference Room on the Department of Mysteries level

After sending his note in January upon returning to work, Ernest had spared very few thoughts to the girl who had intervened (for better or for worse) the day the brains escaped. If she had changed her mind about the position after seeing some of the things they worked with in the Department of Mysteries, that was perfectly fine by him. He had no trouble believing she wasn't cut out for the work — most people weren't. Another complicating factor was that he had, frankly, no idea at all whether she had been affected by the memory charms following the event. Anyone who wasn't an Unspeakable should have had the details erased, per Ministry policy, but her proximity to him during the clean-up as she'd assisted him to the hospital may have gotten her a pass. Then, if she had been affected, there was no telling exactly how much of her memory would have been replaced. Ernest didn't have a great deal of faith in anyone who worked in the Ministry outside of his department, and tampering with memories was such a messy business to begin with. Maybe she'd forgotten having applied for an interview at all.

When the secretary had informed him of his schedule this morning, he'd been quite surprised (and a little annoyed) to find that the interview had finally materialized. He'd been planning to spend the entire day investigating any remaining aftershocks of the time disturbance over the weekend, and now he had to push that aside for this. Hopefully it wouldn't take long.

She was already present when he wheeled himself into the room, two minutes late and balancing a cup of hot tea on his knee. "Miss... Sleptova," he said, referring back to his notes. "You took quite a while to reschedule."

  

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Pet's memories of what had happened at the Ministry of Magic back in December had indeed been wiped from her brain but the emotions hadn't gone with the specifics. She knew she'd been on her way to an interview at the Department of Mysteries and whenever she thought about it she felt a noxious cocktail of unpleasant feelings: regret, fear, embarrassment, guilt.

She'd received a letter from Mr. Mulciber over a month ago about her interview but it had strangely brought up the same horrible feelings as the fake meadow memory that made her not want to go ahead with it. Not knowing why she felt so suddenly opposed to the idea, she had eventually put mind over matter and responded.

Now here she was walking through the atrium again but this time she wasn't greeted by chaos. She did find herself on edge though, like her body was responding to a threat it expected to appear at any moment. Of course nothing came of it, instead she turned up at the appointed room for her interview feeling more tense than she should have.

The room was empty when she was shown in so she loitered awkwardly as she waited, rehearsing a hypothetical conversation in her mind for the hundredth time. She snapped out of it when she heard something drawing closer and it didn't sound like footsteps. Pet turned around in time to see Mr. Mulciber enter in a wheelchair. A brief flicker of surprise flashed across her face before she could school her expression into something more neutral and less likely to offend. Her stomach twisted inexplicably. Had Mr. Mulciber always needed a wheelchair?

"Mr. Mulciber." After a pause she added, "Forgive me, I thought it... Prudent." It felt like the right thing to say not that she could say why exactly.

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Prudent? What could she mean by that? Ernest tried not to let any emotion whatsoever show on his face as he considered the possibilities. She must have been referring to their last interaction, whatever memories she had remaining of it. Had she heard about his injury and had been hesitant to reschedule out of a desire to avoid having to be polite? Or perhaps she hadn't heard, and was afraid to see what the extent of the damage was? She may very well have thought him dead, up until his letter inviting her to reschedule arrived. Then, perhaps this wasn't about his injury, but rather her behavior. Was she embarrassed about anything that had happened? Feeling as though his predicament was in some way her doing? Ernest didn't blame her. While he was, of course, not happy with the way things had ended up, he recognized that without her intervention in the moment he likely would have been far worse off, and perhaps even dead. So, it wasn't as though he could go holding grudges.

It did make him wonder how much of their previous interaction she remembered, but so far she'd given him no indication. He surveyed his notes to see if there was anything related he could bring up to see if he could get her to give a hint one way or the other — though it was not, strictly speaking, much related to the fact of whether or not she was qualified for the position.

Well. He should probably start with the actual interview.

"Alright, Miss Sleptova. I have your NEWT grades here. Which was your most difficult subject?"

  

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To her relief he was getting straight to the point and starting the actual interview. She'd never been interviewed for anything in her life, not as intensely as she was expecting to be here, but she'd tried to prepare herself as best she could. Her father had been able to offer her some information but otherwise she'd had to use logic to try to fathom what would be asked of her.

"Alchemy." So far so good hopefully. "I enjoyed picking up a new subject at NEWT level even if it did have its challenges." That E nestled tauntingly amongst her O's would never cease to frustrate her, she was sure if she could go back and retake the test the result would be different but there was nothing to be done about it now. If she was a little kinder to herself she would let herself off the hook for it, she'd put enormous pressure on herself at the time and nearly cracked under it.

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Ernest moved his cup of tea to a more prominent place on the table. At this point he was more interested with the tea than with her answers. He'd brought things to take notes, but he was hardly going to waste his time jotting down some nonsense about alchemy. Unless it was her passion and she wanted to make it her specialty here at the Department of Mysteries, it was unlikely to have much bearing on the position.

He glanced at his interview sheet and asked another question, just going down the list. While she answered he summoned a small container of sugar from the table by the door and added a spoonful, then cast a nonverbal spell to have his tea stir itself while he moved on to question three. All fairly standard practice, and her responses were fairly standard as well. Frankly, it was boring. When he was about halfway through the list and a third of the way through his cup of tea, he decided to go off-script.

"Miss Sleptova," he said, waving his hand to dismiss the note-taking quill that had been scribbling down a few sparse sentences in response to the last few questions. "Did the Ministry alter your memories after the last time we met?"

  

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Petra felt she was answering in all the right ways, certainly she was answering his questions fully and she had nothing else to compare this situation to. She'd never really been interviewed before. Her confidence was steadily growing as they moved through the questions and then quite suddenly he changed tact and her nerves seized upon her again. Was this a good sign or a bad sign?

After a moment of hesitation as she tried to figure out what he hoped to do with the information she gave him, she answered. "They did, yes." The feelings that came with trying to remember what they'd erased grew stronger and made her wonder if he was about to enlighten her as to why she felt so many negative things. Fear and panic she could understand - it had been some sort of horrible incident after all - but the other feelings she couldn't explain. What if he could and it was worse than she had imagined? Did she even want to know?

Yes, she did want to know but that didn't mean she relished that moment when she might regain her memories.

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That was the answer he expected, by this point in the interview. If she hadn't lost her memories she was doing a remarkable job of keeping her composure and calm during the series of mundane questions.

"Well," he said, shuffling his papers to the side and reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket to retrieve his wand. "Let's fix that, then."

  

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Apparently that moment was now.

Pet strained to hide her trepidation and reluctance from her face. What awfulness was she about to remember? She tried to focus on keeping calm and collected, this was likely some sort of extra test or at the very least he'd probably be judging her reaction. Then again she might have done something that convinced him that she wasn't up to being an Unspeakable and this would be how he proved it to her. Her mouth felt suddenly very dry so she nodded instead to indicate that she was ready.

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   Ernest Mulciber

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Ernest was glad that she nodded, because he did actually need her permission to go interfering with her head — or at least, he wouldn't have done it over her objections. There wasn't a standard protocol for this sort of thing, because he probably wasn't supposed to be undoing Ministry obliviations in the first place. If she was going to come and work for them, though, there was no sense in that memory staying hidden, and if she didn't end up making it through the interview, he could always put the spell back in place.

"Good," he said simply, then began the charm to suppress the memory charm the Ministry had put in place. Removing it entirely without doing any collateral damage to her surrounding memories was a more involved process, and something she could go through when and if they formally hired her; this would suffice for now.

"Now," he said as the magic took effect, "What effect did contact from the creatures have on those in the Atrium? It wasn't explicitly stated; make a deduction."

  

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She felt an alarming rush of adrenaline course through her as her lost memories came flooding back. The emotions she had remembered now seemed as if they had been muted by comparison. The onslaught of recollection subsided very quickly in terms of literal time but it felt much longer to Pet than a couple seconds.

The memory of what had happened when she found him almost sent her squirming out of her chair and onto the floor in humiliation as it returned to her. Now the feelings all made sense, she really wish she hadn't remembered, worse still she'd walked in as though she wasn't responsible for... For... He was in a wheelchair because of her. Was it permanent? She felt she should say something, to at least acknowledge what she'd done, but what could she do but apologize? No amount of apologizing could make up for this, even if it was only temporary!

With a great deal of effort, Pet managed to just about push down the worst of her emotions so she might get through the interview without making a completely fool of herself. Despite everything he likely remembered everything from that day and yet he'd invited her back and given no indication that he felt any kind of malice towards her and that was what she had to keep reminding herself.

It was difficult to navigate her the memories at first but she forced herself to concentrate and sift through the "new" information. There were brains and people panicking. She remembered noticing people who weren't panicking but acting contrary to those around them. One person in particular looked as though she ought to be staring out over a vast, sumptuous library (at least in Pet's opinion) when the reality was mayhem and carnage. If it were only that one person then she could have dismissed it as an anomaly but she'd taken note of various oddly behaving individuals. The obvious culprits were the rogue brains and this much he was seemingly confirming for her. "Perhaps... Possibly hallucinations?" Perhaps in a similar way to a boggart they were being shown fears but also pleasant things.

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She was maintaining her composure; he was impressed. The memories that he'd returned to her would have been alarming for nearly anyone, since creatures like those didn't exist outside of the Department of Mysteries. He'd expected her to have a more obvious reaction to the wheelchair, too, now that she had more context for it. She might have made any assumption in the world upon first seeing it, but now she would know what the inciting incident had been for his newfound disability. At least, she'd have to be an idiot not to piece that much together, and he didn't get the impression she was an idiot. She'd comported herself well throughout the interview so far, and was keeping her wits about her as she pressed forward.

"That's not a bad conjecture," he said with a nod. "Incorrect, but well-founded. You will have surmised, of course, that the creatures came from our department. We study them. For what purpose would we do that?" he continued, asking another question that she could not possibly know the answer to just to see how she guessed at it.

  

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The obvious answer seemed to be to understand the brain creatures better, but that was why a person studied anything, that couldn't be what he was looking for. What could he possibly have expected her to deduce with the very limited information she did have? Unless he was setting her up to fail he had to believe she had enough information to at least come close to the answer, so what was it? The entire incident had to have been a mistake, if not it had been incredibly dangerous and evidently backfired since... Well, her involvement couldn't have been anticipated, but then she wasn't convinced Mr. Mulciber had had the situation in hand before she'd turned up.

"To understand them. Perhaps there's a way they could be utilized or provide understanding of certain types of magic." It sounded terribly vague to Petra but she didn't know how he could expect her to be any more specific without more context.

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Her answer wasn't entirely unexpected, but it lacked the depth he'd been hoping for. Understanding the creatures better was what was implied by the term study, wasn't it? It was far from their only objective in housing them and experimenting with them, however. What would be the point of studying a creature like that, which one would never, ever encounter in the wild, so to speak? There was nothing to be gained for the magical society by better understanding the things themselves. It was what the creatures represented, the concepts that they were tied to, which gave them their empirical value.

"Wrong, Miss Sleptova," he said with a shake of his head. "We don't study them for their own sake; we study them to understand thought. Memory. Emotion. And while that might have bearing on certain types of magic, as you mentioned, their purpose is much grander than that. We don't only study magic in the Department of Mysteries. We study the world itself. We seek to understand all of the things that lesser men ascribe to god or providence. We manipulate the fabric of the universe. We interrogate the assumptions that others take for granted. We go beyond the limitations of comfort of the unliberated mind," he concluded, clasping his hands before him on the table. "Is that what you had in mind, Miss Sleptova, when you applied with our department?"

  

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Being told she was wrong was not a phenomenon Pet could say she'd experienced very often at all. Rarely had she ever walked into a classroom unprepared for the class, nor did she typically volunteer answers in class unless confident she had the correct one. She mollified herself with the thought that it would have been nigh on impossible to give him the answer he'd wanted when he hadn't corrected her initial guess as to what the brains did, nor could she have tried researching the things when she'd had no recollection of them until a few minutes ago.

She was fairly certain that color had risen to her cheeks as he spoke, betraying her discomfort. She forced herself to ignore it. "Yes," she replied, her voice sounding more assertive than she felt. She'd not known exactly what to expect and even what he'd said hadn't fully enlightened her, but it certainly sounded more or less like the impression she'd had of the department. Mystery was a self-explanatory only in that it explained nothing, and it wasn't as though she could have asked an Unspeakable, the clue was in the title. Pet was starting to wonder whether he'd granted her an interview to make her squirm for the part she'd played in his injury. If that was the case she couldn't fully blame him but she also wasn't going to let herself crumble so easily under his scrutiny. "It is."

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She was uncomfortable, as she ought to have been. If she'd been too collected, he would have been forced to assume she didn't fully understand what he was saying. The things they worked with in the Department of Mysteries on a daily basis were unnerving to most of humanity. The things they studied were things that had no business existing in the first place, and the research questions they focused on were questions the average person would never dare to ask themselves. There was nothing comfortable about the work that they did, which was why Ernest (and most of the Unspeakables, he imagined) were so enthralled by it.

For all her discomfort, though, she had answered confidently. Ernest nodded and leaned back in his wheelchair, shifting his attention down to his notes. "In that case," he said briskly, "We'll give it a go. It's standard to have several months of probationary employment, after which, if things haven't worked out, you'll have your memories of the Department erased before you're let go. Before you begin there's quite an excess of paperwork, to get the required clearances approved; you can begin that today with the secretary. Once the paperwork has gone through, we can schedule a time for your memories to be properly restored," he added. "What I've done this afternoon won't last beyond a few hours — which I imagine may have some impact on your recollection of this interview. It may benefit you to take notes," he mused. Un-obliviating people was not a regular part of his interview procedure, so he wasn't sure exactly what she would and wouldn't be able to recall of the last twenty minutes or so once the memory that they were referencing faded back into obscurity.

  

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Pet was taken aback by the next twist in the interview which was... success? Merlin's beard, she'd actually negotiated the interview well enough to succeed, against all odds! She could hardly believe it.

She got to her feet and assumed a solemn expression. "Thank you, sir, I shan't disappoint you." She made a mental note to do what he said at the next moment she was able. Pet didn't care for all the tampering with her memories - she knew obliviation could be devastating when it went wrong and her sharp mind was precious to her - hopefully this would be the last of it.

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